Chapter 50: Damien Lockwood Strikes Again (I Barely Survived It)
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I approached the pile cautiously, slowly, with deep suspicion. Every shirt. Every pair of jeans. Every hoodie. Clean and folded and smelling faintly of detergent and the specific, quiet judgment of someone who had their life together.
I picked up one of my shirts and examined it. It looked cleaner than when I bought it. Almost structurally improved, like the fabric had been given a second chance.
"What the hell?"
I stood there holding it, turning it over like it might explain itself, when Damien walked through the front door an hour later. The moment I spotted him, I marched across the apartment, holding the shirt like it was evidence in a criminal investigation—because, really, it was.
"What is this?"
Damien glanced at the shirt, then looked at me, then back to the shirt with the kind of patience you’d expect from someone who’s used to being grilled.
"You appear to be holding a shirt."
"I know it’s a shirt," I shot back.
"Good."
"My laundry," I said, dramatically pointing. "My laundry has been folded."
A flicker of understanding crossed his face—brief, controlled, then quickly gone again. "Oh."
"Oh?"
He shrugged casually, like it was no big deal. "I hired a cleaning service."
I blinked. "You hired a cleaning service."
"Yes."
"Like a normal rich person."
"Probably."
"And they folded my clothes."
"I told them to do both of our laundry." He paused, adding so casually it almost didn’t register, "Seemed fair."
A smirk tugged at his lips. The absolute bastard was trying not to smile. I could see it happening.
I narrowed my eyes, suspicious. Very suspicious. The issue was I couldn’t exactly argue with that logic; he hadn’t washed my clothes himself. The cleaning service had. Which meant it was a normal landlord-type thing to do, and I had no grounds to complain about it.
Curse him and his loopholes. Curse his entire comfortably affluent, loophole-finding life.
"...Thanks."
The word felt like it physically pained me, like pulling something. I might need a therapist after that.
"You’re welcome." He said it simply, no fanfare, which somehow made it worse than if he’d gloatingly soaked it in my gratitude.
I turned and stormed off before he could relish my thanks any more. Behind me, quiet enough that he probably thought I couldn’t hear, I caught the low sound of him chuckling to himself.
I walked faster.
By Saturday evening, I had managed to convince myself...firmly and rationally—that none of this meant a thing.
The coffee? Nothing. The breakfast? Nothing. The laundry? Nothing. The fact that Damien kept picking up on every little hassle in my life and fixing it?
Absolutely nothing. He was just being a decent person. Sometimes people were decent. It happened. Not a big deal. I wasn’t going to let it become one.
Totally normal roommate behavior. Everything fine. Nothing to analyze. No reason to lie awake at night wondering why he was doing this or what it meant. If he just did all of these because he was sorry for me...or he actually...kinda...cared about me?
That evening, I was trying to cook dinner, trying being the key word since my relationship with cooking was best described as oppositional.
I was stirring pasta sauce, which, by my standards, was actually going pretty well, when I felt him step into the room behind me. I knew it was him before I heard a sound, which was the kind of intuition I was actively choosing to ignore.
He wasn’t making noise. He wasn’t announcing himself. He was just there, shifting the whole atmosphere of the room, like you can feel a storm brewing.
Immediately, every cell in my body became aware of it.
Which was absurd. Completely absurd. He wasn’t even touching me. He was just standing there in the kitchen. Kitchens are for people standing around.
"Why are you just standing there?"
"Observing."
I nearly rolled my eyes into oblivion. "You sound like a nature documentary. Why don’t you take a picture? It’ll last place longer, since you like staring some much."
"Can you blame me? It’s hard not to stare when you’ve got a pretty face..." he said, and there was a glimmer of amusement that indicated he honestly found my horrified expression (I was blushing so hard) incredible.
Did...did he just call me pretty?!
"T...there you go again." I countered weakly. "Talking shit."
I hated that he laughed at my red face. I hated it intensely, mostly because lurking beneath that hatred was the embarrassing fact that I enjoyed it—his dry humor slipping out unexpectedly like something he was trying not to hide anymore.
I reached for the salt. At the same moment, Damien somehow reached for it too.
Our fingers brushed...just barely. A tiny moment of contact over a salt shaker on a Saturday night, nothing and less than nothing in the grand scheme of things.
My brain reacted as if someone detonated fireworks in my skull.
Heat shot through me. I lost my grip, and the spoon clattered against the pot, nearly falling into the sauce. I reflexively grabbed it while my heart did something entirely embarrassing in my chest.
"Careful." His voice was close, too close. Lower than usual, warm in a way that had no right being there...He leaned closer to my ear and whispered. "Wouldn’t want you getting hurt."
I gasped and looked up, an enormous mistake. A catastrophic mistake...the kind of mistake that happens to people entirely lacking survival instincts.
He was doing this on purpose! I had solid proof this time, because what did did he need salt for?! For fuck’s sake, I was the one cooking!
He was close enough that I could see everything—the pale, precise blue of his eyes, the dark hair falling slightly over his forehead, the sharp outline of his jaw, and that mouth, the stupidly attractive mouth I wasn’t thinking about and hadn’t been thinking about every time I found a note on the counter.
Nope, not happening!
Not today!
Not ever!
"Going to burn dinner again, Reyes?" he whispered in that low voice again, a mix of teasing and something else...like he was holding back from something. "You should focus."
The small smirk curling at the corner of his mouth almost undid me right then and there, right in the kitchen, over pasta sauce, with a wooden spoon in my hand.
I pointed toward the door with whatever dignity I had left, which was barely any. "Get out of my kitchen."
His eyebrow raised. "What?"
"Out."
"Why?"
"Because you’re trying to annoy me on purpose and you know it."
He tilted his head slightly, completely unbothered, like he was at peace with being irritating. "I’m helping."
"You’re just standing there breathing at me."
"And?"
"That’s the problem! And you’re way to close!"
He looked at me for a moment, a stillness passing through his expression that I couldn’t quite name, something that flitted in and out before I could take a good look.
Then he laughed, not just the quiet chuckle he usually allowed himself, but a real, genuine laugh that filled the kitchen and vanished just as quickly.
The sound hit me somewhere unexpected.
Because it wasn’t fair. That was the thing. It really wasn’t fair. Attractive people shouldn’t be allowed to be attractive and funny and have a laugh that does whatever his just did to my insides.
There should be laws. Regulations. Some sort of cosmic limit on how many traits like that one person can possess at a time.
I turned back to the stove before my red face could betray me.
"Out," I repeated, more weakly than I intended.
Behind me, still with traces of laughter in his voice, he said, "Fine, fine. Don’t burn it. I’m actually looking forward to your meal."
I heard him push off the counter and head toward the hallway. I listened to his footsteps until they faded away.
Then I stood there alone in the kitchen, stirring pasta sauce that didn’t need stirring anymore, telling myself the warmth in my cheeks came from the steam.
It was definitely not from the steam.
I knew it wasn’t from the steam, it was from how close he was, he’s warmth, the sound of his voice whispering above my hair, the teasing tone of his voice, the fact that he knew he had an effect over me and was actively using that against me...
I ran my fingers through my hair in frustration. God, I was so cooked.
At least the sauce turned out fine.
Small miracles.